


A Promise Kept

by subtextismygod



Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, a funeral for owen, curt is going to destroy chimera, enjoy, i swear there will be some happiness, i wrote this for a friend but i hope tall like it too, oh yeah and its gay, some big twists i hope yall are ready, youre welcome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-19 14:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtextismygod/pseuds/subtextismygod
Summary: Curt Mega has one request after the death of his long-time partner. He wants a proper funeral for him, so he can say his final goodbyes.But, when you're a spy, is there ever truly a goodbye?





	1. The Funeral of Owen Carvour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nerdicorn_the_shipper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerdicorn_the_shipper/gifts).

It was his one request. He had destroyed most of CHIMERA, he had killed his partner, and what did he get for it? A word of thanks from Cynthia and one request. He had already known what he would ask of her before she had finished the sentence. 

He asked for a funeral. A proper funeral, a proper goodbye. So he could say goodbye because even though he said he had moved on, he had not. He still loved him more than words could describe, and more than they could ever express in a society that would see them dead for what they felt for each other. So he asked for a funeral.

A funeral for Owen Carvour. 

Outside of Tatiana, Curt, Barb, and Cynthia, not a soul knew that Owen was-- had been-- alive. Even MI6 still believed that he was dead. The body had been moved to the freezers in Barb’s lab, and they were preparing to use it for science-stuff. But seeing Owen, knowing that this time, he had truly killed him…

He wanted to have a moment to say goodbye. 

Cynthia had accepted without question. Clearly, she had anticipated him asking for something much more difficult to obtain. But that was the one thing that Curt wanted. A funeral. 

It wasn’t much, only a small casket in a small grave under a great oak tree. It was over in a flash, but Curt still remained, even after Tatiana had left. He just stared blankly at the name carved into the gravestone. Then he knelt down and traced them with a finger. 

He had never been religious, he preferred more substantial beliefs than that of a god in the sky. But he still wondered if Owen could see him now. If he knew how much Curt still cared for him. Or if he was happy.

“I guess that makes me a liar now,” he whispered, his finger still on the V of CARVOUR. “A liar and a killer.” 

Did Owen know what Curt had gone through after he was presumed dead the first time? Did he know how Curt mourned over an empty casket in an unmarked grave? Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have become so obsessed with revenge. Maybe if he had known, Curt wouldn’t have had to kill him. 

“I miss you, Owen.” He knew it was strange, to talk to the gravestone, the grave. But in a way, it felt like he was talking to Owen. “I love you.” A choke caught in his throat as tears welled in his eyes. "I loved you."

For all those years when Curt thought Owen was dead, had Owen truly hated him enough to join CHIMERA? A part of him still hoped that Owen was alive, that he would somehow come back a second time. Maybe, in the end, Owen wasn’t part of CHIMERA, and he had been trying to take them down from the inside by telling Curt. 

But then, Curt had still killed him. 

“Did you want to die? Did you want me to kill you?” 

It was the ultimate revenge, now that Curt thought about it. He had had Owen back for such a short time, in which Owen had tried to kill him. Curt had thought that he killed Owen, way back in the Russian facility, way back when Owen has fallen. That it was his fault that Owen had died. And, of course, their story ended the same way. In a Russian facility with Curt killing his best friend, his partner.

But this time-- this time it was permanent. 

“You were always the better spy. Ever since we met, you were always better. Our job is to lie, to fake. Now, please Owen, I want one miracle. One more miracle, that’s it. I want you to be alive. I want us to be able to go back to where we were before all of this. I want to be with you. No deaths, no spies, just you and I. Damn the world and all of its hatred. All I want is you.” 

No one can survive a bullet to the brain, Curt was once told. That was where he had put his last bullet. Into Owen’s brain.

He noticed something right next to the marble gravestone. A patch of green grass and yellow flowers. Daffodils. They had always been Owen’s favorite flower, but Curt had never asked why. Now he would never know. He picked one of the buds and set it gently at the base of the gravestone. 

For the first time since Owen died, Curt began to cry.

He was glad no one was around to see him. That this moment was his and his alone to share with Owen. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move on from you, Owen. I don’t think I can let go of what we shared. But I don’t want to. No matter what, you will always be a part of me from now on.”

A tear fell to the dirt and soaked into the soil, making its way down to the plain wood of the casket. 

“I loved you, Owen Carvour. And I think you loved me too. So… I’m sorry I killed you. I’m-- I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

He nodded, reassuring himself. With a deep breath, he stood and walked away, not looking over his shoulder. Because, he knew, if he looked over his shoulder, he would never be able to turn away. Because he would never be able to let go of his partner.

As Curt Mega walked away from the grave, a man watched him with sad eyes. 

“I’m so sorry, Curt,” he said under his breath. “I really, truly am. I wish you could understand what CHIMERA is doing. What I did. The things I’ve done, I can’t come back from. And at this point, I’m afraid to tell you. Because if I did, I would lose you forever.” He wished he could explain this all to Curt, to let him understand.

The tears flooding his eyes made it hard to focus on Curt, on the receding shape of his partner. “Goodbye, Curt. I’m sorry.”

And Owen Carvour watched as Curt walked away, and wished that he would look back.

He didn’t.


	2. The Warmest Hello

“Are you okay, Curt?” Tatiana kept a steadying hand on his shoulder as he walked away from the grave. His own hands were shaking slightly, but he shoved them into the pockets of his jacket. 

“I’m fine,” he lied. If she realized it, she didn’t show it. But he was sure she did. She was a spy. Her job was to lie and know when others were lying. He was grateful that she said nothing, though.

“I know how hard it can be, burying an ex-lover.” 

“I doubt you were the one who put them there, though.” It was all Curt’s fault. It was his fault that Owen was six feet under the dirt. 

“You would be surprised at some of the things I had to do to protect my family,” Tatiana said, her eyes going blank for a moment. 

“We’ve both done things we aren’t proud of.” 

She put her arm around him and pulled him close. “I’m here if you need anything.”

Curt was truly grateful to have a friend like her. Especially in a time like this. But… “I need to be alone for a bit.” She nodded in understanding, then moved off to get a ride with Cynthia back to the American base. 

Curt made his way through the streets he knew so well until he found a bar. It was the bar that he had frequented so often in the four years after Owen’s… fall. Almost poetic that he go there now. Even though his usual bartender was dead.

Just another thing that was Curt’s fault. 

The bar was closed. Curt went in anyway. 

It was empty, too. It probably closed down after… At least there was still whiskey. Curt put some ice in his glass and poured the drink in. He moved to drink it, then he paused.

His mind flashed back to memories of after Owen’s fall. How he had lost the will to be a spy, lost everything. 

This time was different, he convinced himself. He was going to move on. 

He drank. 

Time minutes blended together as he drank and drank. After every glass, he would think, then he would pull his gun out and shoot a round at the wall with tears in his eyes. There was anger more than anything, strangely. He wasn’t quite sure why. 

He remembered Berlin, the spring before Owen’s fall. How they raced to get out of the facility in six minutes. It was those three minutes in the Russian facility that had started it all. 

That had forced Curt to kill Owen. 

Little memories started to surface, flashes of what his life was before everything. He remembered those little moments where they were alone together, when the rest of the world didn’t matter. It hadn’t mattered, because they had each other. He remembered all those times when they were willing time and time again to put their lives in each others’ hands. How they trusted each other unwaveringly. 

He had truly trusted Owen until the very end. He had believed that his Owen, the Owen he knew, was still inside there somewhere. Even when he was holding a gun to Curt’s head, Curt still trusted him. It was strange, he thought, to trust someone that much. It almost hurt, to trust him so much.

No, Curt thought. That wasn’t it. That wasn’t why it hurt.

It hurt to love him so much that, when there was no return for him, his heart broke. And he was still picking up the pieces.

He took another drink.

His head felt a little fuzzy, but he kept drinking. He drank until the pain that he felt had faded into a dull throb, and then drank more and more and more. Everything faded more and more until the only thing he noticed was when his glass was empty, then he filled it some more. 

Each drink made him forget one thing. The first one erased Owen’s smile. The second erased his laugh. The third erased his voice. The fourth erased his eyes.

The fifth erased him entirely. 

Then, suddenly, his mind cleared. For a moment, he wasn’t sure why. Then he realized. 

It wasn’t the click of the gun as it was leveled at his head, the barrel pressing up against the back of his skull. It wasn’t the wash of cold dread that froze his bones. It wasn’t the voice that spoke levelly. “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.” 

It was the reflection in the mirror across from him. It was because he recognized those lips. He recognized his voice. And he remembered his eyes, more than anything else.

Because he knew who held the gun.

It was Owen Carvour. 

He couldn’t stop the gasp and the name that fell from his lips in shock. “Owen?” 

“Hello, there, Curt,” Owen replied, his English accent colder than Curt had ever known. 

“You were dead. You’re dead,” Curt insisted. He must be hallucinating, making things up in his drunken state. His voice cracked. “I shot you. I-- I killed you.” 

He let out a dark chuckle. “You tried your best. You always try your best.” Curt felt his heart start beating faster and faster, in adrenaline or shock, he didn’t know. “That’s what you do, don’t you? Try your best and hope that it’s enough?” 

“Owen…” 

“Your hardest didn’t save me, did it? You let me die, you left me there to die.” He pressed the gun to Curt’s head, pushing him forward as the cold metal touched his scalp. “And now you’ll know what it feels like to have your partner kill you without mercy.”

“Owen, please,” Curt pleaded. This didn’t make sense, not at all. Owen was dead, Curt knew. He had killed him. But, somehow he was back. He wasn’t sure why he was pleading, though. He wasn’t pleading for his life, he knew that much. But then it hit him. He was pleading for Owen’s life. He knew what it was like to kill his partner. And he didn’t want Owen, or whoever this was, to have to feel that again. “You don’t have to kill me. We can work this out, whatever it is.” A tear fell down his cheek, but he knew that Owen either didn’t see or didn’t care. 

“There’s nothing to work out. You abandoned me.” He cocked the gun. If he had gone in without it cocked… he wasn’t ready to kill Curt yet. He still had a chance. 

“I thought you had died. Please, Owen, if I knew you were alive,” his voice caught in his throat. “Please…” 

A gunshot rang out and Curt flinched as blood splattered across the table. His blood? That notion was disproved a second later when he saw Owen’s body crumple to the ground behind him, the gun clattering down a moment later. 

Curt grabbed his own gun and whirled around, holding it up in front of him. 

He shouldn’t have been as shocked as he was. He had seen strange things recently. His best friend had died, come back to life and died in the span of a month. Something about Owen, dead at his feet, seemed odd, and now he knew why. It wasn’t his Owen. 

His Owen, the Owen he had fallen in love with, stood in front of him with a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes, with his gun outstretched and smoke still pouring from the barrel. The look in his eyes was wary and afraid, but so joyful, too. Sad, though, his whole face was sad. He was different, though. He had scars over his face and hands and arms, and the happy eyes he had once had were gone. 

Owen, his Owen, the one he loved and missed, smiled softly. With a voice barely louder than a whisper, he spoke. 

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”


	3. The Coldest Goodbye

“Explain, now,” Curt demanded. He leveled the gun at Owen, Owen who looked so sad and so alone, Owen who had just died and yet was standing in front of him. “How is that… thing… you? Who are you?” His voice wavered and he held back a sob, because he was seeing Owen and somehow, some way, he was here, he was  _ alive _ . 

Owen’s face fell as soon as Curt spoke, as if he had hoped for some different reaction. “It’s me, Curt. It’s Owen.” He stepped towards him, slowly, cautiously, his eyes begging Curt to realize it. But Curt took a step back and raised the gun higher. 

“Stay back,” he choked out, a sob almost cutting off his words. “You’re not…  _ him _ . That, that’s not him. Owen Carvour is dead.” Even as he spoke, he felt unsure in his words. This person, he seemed like Owen. He talked like Owen, he looked like Owen, he sounded like Owen. But Curt still couldn’t allow himself to hope that this was Owen. Owen had disguised himself as the Deadliest Man Alive. Who was to say that these people weren’t using the same technology. 

Owen, or whoever it was, his eyes were so sad. They pleaded with Curt, but Curt couldn’t let them win. “Berlin. Spring, 1956. Remember that?” 

That was when they had made their new record. Six minutes. That was the record that had caused Owen to fall. Only Owen was there. 

But he wasn’t done. “Shanghai, 1951? Bangladesh, 1944?” Their first escape. Their first mission together. 

“London, 1943? Drury Lane, The White Hart. Remember that?”

Curt’s heart stopped. His mind went blank and he was suddenly transported to years before. A little bar on the corner of Drury and A40, in London. He remembered walking in, ready to drink his life away before returning to America the next morning. He remembered running into a tall, handsome man. He remembered missing his flight because he slept with that man, and he remembered hearing his name. Owen Carvour. Only three months later, did he run into Owen in Bangladesh and realize the truth. 

“Owen?” 

His gun clattered to the floor as his entire world melted away until he could see Owen and only Owen. Owen smiled a little and shuddered a sigh of relief, but Curt felt tears. He sobbed roughly as he took a stutter-step forward and fell into Owen’s arms, feeling his arms wrap around him and hold onto him tightly, as if Curt was going to slip away. 

“How are you alive?” he asked, face buried in Owen’s shoulder. “I shot you.” He remembered the dead body on the floor. “ _ You  _ shot you.” 

“Those… things weren’t me. I’m me.” 

“I don’t understand.” Curt pulled away and took a moment to look into Owen’s eyes. He saw so much emotion there that he didn’t care to uncover, if only because his Owen was back and he was back for good. 

“CHIMERA, Curt. They weren’t just working on bombs and guns. They… they were experimenting with a kind of replication technology. Clones. The one you shot, that was the most recent one. Almost a perfect recreation of me. This one, this was the second that they made. There’s one left out there.”

Curt staggered away. “How do I know you’re not one of those… things?” 

“There was only one thing that they couldn’t perfect,” Owen said, clearly trying to hide the hurt he felt. “They gave them my memories, my past, everything. But they couldn’t give them emotions. But one escaped. The one you killed, the Deadliest Man Alive, that was the recent one. They had almost gotten it to care. This one, it was colder.” 

“And this last one, it’s incapable of any human emotion?” Curt assumed. 

Owen looked down for a moment, then back at Curt, eyes filled with shame. “Yes. Incapable of human emotion.” 

Curt had trained to be a spy, he spotted Owen’s lie and shame the moment they appeared. “What aren’t you telling me?” 

“Curt… please don’t make me…” 

Slowly, cautiously, Curt bent down and picked up the gun again. He didn’t raise it, just kept it at his side. “If you’re really Owen, you’d tell me.”

“If I tell you,” Owen warned, his voice trembling. “You’ll hate me.” 

Curt’s voice, too, was trembling, and he didn’t trust himself to say anything more than a sentence. “Nothing you could say would ever make me hate you.” 

He took a deep breath. “CHIMERA found me in the rubble. I was dead. I hadn’t survived the fall.” Curt steadied himself with a hand on the chair. “They put me in stasis, copying my memories, my mind, everything. They put it into a blender, mixed it all up. They made me someone else entirely. But they saved my life. 

“They called me Phoenix. I was made for the sole purpose of training the clones, all the Owens they made. The first mission they went on was in Russia. A little town near Moscow. I was sent to supervise, to make sure they were on task. Their mission was to eradicate a KGB training facility. There was only one survivor.”

“Who?” 

“Tatiana  Slozhno.” 

Curt blinked, and it all made sense. Tatiana had recognized Owen when they first met. Not his Owen, but the Owen that had freed her from the KGB. 

“I found a file, there. I didn’t know why I found it until I read the name.  _ Your  _ name, Curt. I remembered everything, then. But I still was a part of CHIMERA, they still thought I was Phoenix. 

“I did their dirty work, I tortured for them and killed for them. I did everything they asked me to, so I could get to the high-ups. I could shut it all down if I tried. Then, I heard the next mission they were sending a clone on. They were going to assassinate you, Curt. So I released the clones, all three of them. I followed the one that tracked you down in Russia. I saw you kill it. You said you moved on. 

“I guess I believed you.” Tears were streaming down Owen’s face as he spoke. 

Curt didn’t say anything. He just let it all sink in, every detail that crushed his heart more and more. The thing that hurt the most, though, wasn’t what Owen had done. Who he had killed.

It was that he didn’t trust that Curt still loved him. 

“Please say something, Curt. Anything.” 

“I missed you.” 

Owen chuckled softly. “I missed you, too.” 

“Where’s the last clone?”

“Curt--” 

“I want to help.”

“This isn’t your fight.”

“Damn my fight. If it’s your fight, that means it’s mine, too. Where’s the last clone?” 

“Don’t you dare get mixed up in this. Don’t you fucking dare. This is my mess to clean up, not yours.” 

There wasn’t anything he could say to convince Owen, he knew. Nothing could sway him into letting Curt help him. So he didn’t say anything. He just walked forward, grabbed Owen’s collar, and pulled him down to meet his lips in a kiss.

It was soft and short, but it was everything that Curt wanted to say and more. He felt Owen curve his body softly into his and lean into him with surprising gentleness. His hands reached up to cover Curt’s and hold them tightly, not even for a moment letting them go. When Curt pulled back, when their arms fell to their sides, hands still entwined, Curt looked at Owen. “Let me help you. Please.”

“Curt…” 

“You know I’ll follow you anyway.” 

Owen laughed quietly. “Yeah, you will. You’d have a hard time finding me, though.”

“I don’t think so,” Curt said back, his voice almost a whisper. 

“Why’s that?” 

“Personal history does have its benefits.”

Owen squeezed Curt’s hands and leaned his forehead against his, a smile touching his lips. “I guess it does.” 


End file.
